EPA Fracking Report and Energy Politics

American Thinker ^ | 12-9-11 | Thomas Lifson

[radioone]

Yesterday's EPA report raising water pollution worries about fracking in Wyoming amounts to psy-ops in the Obama re-election campaign.

One of President Obama's biggest electoral vulnerabilities is his energy policy, which impoverishes America and hands money we borrow from the Chinese to enrich Hugo Chavez, OPEC, and other foes. The Keystone Pipeline alone will cost a hundred thousand jobs or more when spinoffs are considered, many of them high paying.

snip

The EPA has pulled this kind of stunt before, making a similar claim about fracking in Texas, later refuted.

[thackney]

EPA Claim Fracking Caused Wy. Water Contamination
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2818074/posts

Note also the following from the Rig Zone Article linked above:

“The latest test results came from two wells that EPA itself constructed, and which reached to depths of about 775 and 970 feet, deeper than other private water wells in the area. It detected levels of benzene, a carcinogen, that exceeded safe drinking water standards as well as synthetic chemicals—glycols and alcohols—used in hydraulic fracturing fluid.”

They didn’t find those chemicals in people’s water wells. They dug extra deep wells below where people were getting their water and found chemicals at the lower depths, not a health hazaard at the drinking water depth.

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This field is rather unique in that decades ago, they actually did hydraulic fracturing IN the drinking water Aquifer rather than thousands of feet below it.

“The agency also stressed that the findings are unique to Pavillion, where fracturing has taken place both in and below the drinking water aquifer and very close to drinking water wells — conditions that are not common elsewhere in the U.S. The region has been home to oil and gas drilling since the 1950s, and some of the 169 gas production wells in the area were fractured at points just 1,220 feet below the ground.

By contrast, in South Texas, energy companies are extracting natural gas from the Eagle Ford shale formation at depths ranging from 4,000 to 14,000 feet below the surface.”

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/12/08/epa-says-hydraulic-fracturing-polluted-groundwater/

[Tupelo]

Step one in shutting down the newest way to extract oil & gas. Next will come humongous meeting of environmental groups. Then a ban on fracking.

[factoryrat]

The feds and their special interests are actively trying to corner and control the energy production market in the US, that's the only strategy I see that explains why they're doing what their doing. The US is one of the few countries in the world that hasn't nationalized energy development and production. A few big players stand to make a lot of money if the feds can pull it off, and will be handsomely rewarded for playing their part. It's the ultimate monopoly scheme, because whomever controls the energy supply in the US, controls the country.